


Wonder

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Antony and Cleopatra - Shakespeare
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Community: ladiesbingo, Gen, Loyalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 20:31:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13795767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: Here in the monument, the greatest wonder of the world, a greater wonder can be seen - by those who have the will to see it.





	Wonder

Gold and lapis lazuli, mighty blocks of carved and painted stone, and the Queen's dark, perfumed hair fallen forward across her face: all of it blurs suddenly in front of Charmian's eyes, swimming and shimmering like the Nile after the floods have gone down, all of it treacherously lazy. She would like nothing more than to slip down into that inviting haze, but her duty is not discharged. Not yet.

The man was saying something, a little while ago. What was it? She gropes painfully for the memory of his words. 'Is this well done?' he had asked. Now, equally painfully, she summons some of her own. They are his, reused. They will have to do. 'It is well done,' she says, and feels the words slurring into each other. She wants to laugh in triumph and weep in grief. It is well done. There was no better way to do it.

He is staring at her, angry, not understanding. 'Fitting,' she explains, 'for a princess descended from so many royal kings.'

Can the fool not see? He stands here in the monument, the wonder of the world, and does not perceive that the greater wonder lies at his feet. He should be on his knees; he should prostrate himself in awe; he should be weeping, knowing himself blessed or cursed to see this sight. She herself has been kneeling this long while. It is the only possible response to this majesty and this woe.

The soldier is not mollified. Fear and anger are radiating from him in tense waves. Yes, you wretch, she thinks, tremble, as you should! Ah, but he wanted them in Rome. Caesar's fury will be fierce. It would be worth it, Charmian thinks jubilantly; she would risk the wrath of any emperor, to be here. The privilege is for her and for Iras, the one to go after and the other before. It is the soldier's misfortune that he does not understand and he never will. She pities him. He sees the wonder of the world and the greater wonder within it, and he does not know what he sees.

This sight is fading from Charmian's own eyes, the darkness spreading across her vision in patches of dull yellow. She wills it on; she will follow her Queen into the dark and beyond it. And yet she would gaze upon the sight in this world for as long as is permitted her.

She cannot hold her head up any longer. She would have been proud to the end; she would have followed the Queen to Rome and to the end of the world, had she willed it. She would have endured any humiliation that Caesar might have devised, would have gone shoeless, naked, hungry. But this is better. Here the last Queen of Egypt is not a spectacle, but the wonder that she was born to be.

Perhaps, even now, he might understand. 'Ah, soldier -' Charmian says, and she has gone, the darkness has claimed them, and the wonder of Egypt is an empty shell, and, for the living, only a memory.


End file.
